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Theatre Materials: What is theatre made of?
Edited by Eleanor Margolies
Publisher: The Centre for Excellence in Training for Theatre (Central School of Speech & Drama)
ISBN 978-0-9539501-5-7

This stimulating and informative book is a collection of essays and a record of contributions, arising from the 2008 Theatre Materials/Material Theatres conference at the Centre for Excellence in Training for Theatre, Central School of Speech and Drama. The conference gave theatre practitioners and academics opportunities to discuss and explore what the editor, in her introduction, calls “the stuff of theatre”. The book captures the atmosphere of exploration, discovery and questioning that a good conference provides. Opening energetically with essays contributed by the conference’s keynote speakers, American director Anne Bogart, and theatre academic Alan Read, the materiality of theatre is a given. Bogart’s reference to Friedman’s ‘The Lexus and the Olive Tree’ frames the exploration of a continuum between ancient culture and new technology, which is reflected in the book’s collection of words and images from artists, performers, scenographers, puppeteers, designers and architects.
Alan Read reminds us that objects are not facts. They have “a fascinating social life”, and are not to be patronised. He invites us to a dialogue with these other entities “who do not interrupt discussions among humans but simply further enhance and open up processes already under way”. Our relationship with the material is further explored in the book through social and political contexts, including “the greening of the theatre”, and explorations of architecture and non-theatre spaces that are pushing theatre makers into new relationships with the material, connecting imagination, engineering and forms of activism.
The choices made by the editor provide us with a wide range of ways of describing, exploring, identifying and questioning materiality and our relationship to ‘stuff’. The contributions are variable, and it is intriguing to look at the list of conference contributors and see what got left out. But, as a book that will attract practitioners, students, makers and academics, I would expect there to be different stand-out contributions for different readers. For me the highlights include Paul Rae on ‘Tree Duet’, (“You can’t just put a tree on stage and expect it to do what you want it to”), Rene Baker on ‘The puppet as teacher of acting’, Beth McDougall on ‘Unpacking the [costume] archive’, and Zoe Laughlin’s demonstration of smart materials. In all the contributions we are reminded of the world of space, place and time in which theatre exists, and the ecology of art forms in which it thrives. I was also fascinated by the ‘Bar of Ideas’. This was initially an installation, performance space and meeting place for the conference, including a library, a games room and a science lab. It was subsequently developed for the Paradise Garden Festival in Victoria Park, East London, which somehow sums up the continuation of learning, playing and experimentation which grew out of the conference and is represented in this book. I applaud the affordability of the book (£10), and hope that is soon being read, debated and used, and, in keeping with the theme, weighed, felt, tasted and digested.